


like blossoms to the ground

by demonglass



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Experimental Style, I guess???, Introspection, M/M, Short n sweet, character piece, definitely not fueled by my own internal fears haha what??, i blacked out when i wrote this, literal 1k of word vomit, school is never mentioned directly tho, take from this what you will, the prompt was from school
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 20:54:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16794559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonglass/pseuds/demonglass
Summary: That was the moment, right then; that was magic on Earth.





	like blossoms to the ground

That spring when Jeno was freshly nineteen and was looking out at the world and ahead to the future, everything seemed like it was moving a mile a minute; he felt like he was falling as the rug was ripped out from under him, like he was locked in a car with no working brakes, no steering wheel to speak of, careening forward with no way of stopping, the direction of the car entirely out of his own control, yet even as the rug rushed away from him and the car flew down the road, he himself was not moving forward at all. In these times when he detached from his life and saw the world spinning as if he was watching it from far away, from the surface of the moon, and the hurtling turned his stomach with anxiety and filled him with a strange, groundless fear of flying off the edge and being sucked into the whirlwind, he picked up and walked away.

Down the road from the slanting-roofed house with browning cream shudders and a splintered, veined driveway in which he grew up, a walk separate from time and immune to the tribulations of the present took him on journey past tight-packed green trees and the sparkling river which jumped up the banks after the slightest rainfall, over the groaning wooden bridge and around the sloping hill of the meadow dancing with flowers, to the park with creaking swings and luminescent ghosts of glowing memories from his childhood. He was there more often than anywhere that spring, it seemed, and he was not alone.

Renjun, who did not grow up in a small town but in a restless, bustling city, who appeared to have discovered years ago how to live perfectly with the rushing ebb and flow of the world, as if he were unable to be caught in riptides because he himself was the water from which the riptide was born, or even the moon that sent the tides reeling with the strength of his gravity in the first place; Renjun, who raced along at the same speed as the rushing wind, and who at first glance seemed to be entirely unstoppable, as if stilling would negate the very essence of who he was (a shark, always on the move, graceful, powerful, beautiful); Renjun, who despite any outsider’s perception of him, proved that even the churning sea fell still sometimes, was also there.

The seats of the swings were a dull, dusty green (they must have been outrageously vibrant when new, though), dusted with light flakes of rust from the old chains holding them up, and some drooped so low they almost brushed the soft wood chips piled up beneath them. Sometimes Jeno and Renjun sat there like a scene from a movie, kicking off the ground and letting the wind tangle through their hair, floating and falling and starting all over again; sometimes when the days were dry they laid instead beneath the peach trees under a shower of slowly raining blossoms, the petals painting their shoulders pink like sunrise; sometimes they ran together from light post to light post and back until their lungs screamed and their knees hit the pavement; sometimes they spoke in hushed voices, or listened silently to the birds; sometimes Jeno cried; sometimes Renjun held him. 

He had wondered, often, what it all meant, whether any of it could exist outside of the park, beyond the comfort and safety of a place separated by trees and sagging fence from the rest of the world. He had sometimes wondered how Renjun felt about the time they spent together (about him); he had sometimes wondered, also, how he felt about Renjun.

Then, once, they had walked to the weather-worn playground and Renjun had clambered up the uneven bars, gripped the gleaming, worn metal and swung upside down, and Jeno had tilted his head to the side to better see Renjun’s shining eyes and glowing cheeks, admiring the curl of his lips as he grinned like he held all the secrets of the world buried on the tip of his tongue, threatening to spill out at any moment, and the shadows his lashes cast down across his skin. Something had shown on his face, and Renjun had dropped down, righting himself and stumbling only an inch when his feet hit the ground, but the inch had been enough to make Jeno reach out, and he’d caught Renjun’s arms to steady him (a redundancy, though neither of them minded), and then it had been impossible to look away. There weren’t fireworks - it wasn’t like the books Jeno sometimes buried himself in - but there was understanding, there was trust, and there was a feeling Jeno couldn’t fully describe with written words, with anything found in any dictionary.

He had tipped forward and Renjun had leaned in to meet him and they had kissed, soft, gentle, sweet. Renjun’s hands had both found homes: one on Jeno’s cheek, the other on the base of his neck, and Jeno’s eyes had fallen delicately like the flurries of winter’s first snow. The world had faded away, its incessant spinning, its boundless hurtling through time and space without control or anchor, always leaving him in the dust, had disappeared, and finally Jeno was the one moving forward on his own. He suspected an equal, opposite experience had seized Renjun then: that he’d finally found a place to rest after the rush and the races that kept him on his feet and moving every moment he was away; a place to lay his exhausted head and breathe easy (he deserved it).

He had found peace then, (Renjun had too, of this he is certain without a doubt); they had met in the middle of a dance of push and pull, discovered the balance of equilibrium, and they had fallen together slowly like the feather-light peach blossoms from the branches so often above them, but they had fallen just as beautifully. That was it Jeno thinks (Jeno knows); that was the moment, right then; that was magic on Earth, bottled in a weightless kiss. He holds it tight, pressed to his heart, always.

**Author's Note:**

> uhhh i wrote this in like one sitting and was it even coherent?? idk. that's what happens when your assignment is to mimic the writing style of the book with the LONGEST sentences you've ever read (The Hours), and to write the whole thing about a singular moment in time, and you have absolutely no damn clue what you're doing! n e ways this was like,, the shortest thing I've ever posted and the most confusing thing I've ever written but I hope you enjoyed it!


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